Tremble

by Tobsha Learner

  There were six chimeras of goat and human—three female, three male—and six humans. The thirteenth figure was an enigma. Alistair had studied the bearded youthful figure over and over. He was the only fully clad person in the entire mural and the archaeologist couldn’t work out whether he was victim or victor, priest or god. The figure had a feminine beauty, even bearded, and wore a wreath of vine leaves. He was the pivotal element in each tableau. Alistair could only assume that it was Dionysus himself. Whatever the case, it was clear that the thirteenth figure was an observer of the orgy, not a participant—that was, until the fourth tableau.

  One evening Lady Whistle joined him in the study. Demurely dressed in gray jersey, her hair coiled in a fine net, she came armed with tracing paper and a set of fine pencils wrapped in a roll of linen.

  “Please excuse my intrusion, Mr. Sizzlehorn. I have an astrological intuition I wish to act upon. I hope I will not disturb you.”

  Disturb him? She distracted him to the point of despair, he thought, trying hard not to stare at her ankles or bosom.

  “Of course not, my lady,” he replied curtly as she settled herself on the other side of the desk and pulled the drawing of the first tableau toward her.

  Alistair watched surreptitiously as she placed the tracing paper over the figures sprawled in a starfish configuration, a tangle of vaginal, oral, and anal stimulation. She traced their outlines then, with a ruler, joined them with straight lines. A set of points began to emerge.

  Fascinated, Alistair abandoned all pretense of his own work and watched as she reached up to the bookcase and pulled down a large manual entitled Astrological and Astral Formations of the Northern Skies. She opened it to an entry marked Jupiter in the sign of Sagittarius in the fifth house. It showed an illustration of the placement of the planets joined by a series of lines. Carefully she placed the tracing over it. The orgiastic formation almost exactly matched the placement of the stars. Shaken, Alistair dropped his pen.

  “As I thought,” Lady Whistle murmured, “the mural is a depiction of a spring rite. The thirteenth figure is the young Dionysus, Dendrites, a manifestation that translates as tree-youth—to burst into leaf or blossom—a representation of the spring equinox. Now, I wager that if I trace the next three segments of the mural they will move progressively closer to the exact position of the first day of the astrological year.”

  Carefully her hand, its long pale fingers grasped around the pencil, sketched in the figures. She had the dispassion of a mathematician, Alistair noted, marveling at the scientific precision she displayed as she bit her lower lip in concentration.

  The tracing of the fourth segment proved to be not quite a match for the correct star formation. Alistair looked at the fourth stanza, which he had just finished translating. A hypothesis that had been forming in his subconsciousness suddenly articulated itself.

  “There’s a fifth segment missing. I’m sure of it!” he blurted out.

  “A fifth section of the mural?” Lady Whistle asked cautiously.

  “And with it the fifth stanza. Look carefully…” His excitement caused him to dispense with the etiquette of formal address.

  He pointed to the outer edge of the scroll. On close inspection the margin between it and the fourth tableau did seem unnaturally wide. Lady Whistle followed his gesture but did not appear as perturbed by the idea as Alistair imagined she would be.

  “This is wishful thinking,” she said. “The priest, who is the embodiment of Dionysus, is seduced in the fourth stanza. There is nowhere further for the narrative to go.”

  “Perhaps, but something seems incomplete in the verse. Besides, shouldn’t the final position of the figures match the transition from the old year into the new?”

  For the first time in their acquaintance Lady Whistle looked anxious, a mere glimmer before she resumed her usual unfathomable demeanor.

  “I suspect the discrepancy results from the shifting of the skies since the second century A.D. Believe me, if there were a missing fifth tableau and stanza, I would know.”

  A twitch pulled at her lower eyelid and instinctively Alistair sensed she was lying. She pulled his notes toward her.

  “This is the translation of the fourth stanza?”

  “Indeed, my lady. Completed a moment before you entered the room.” He gazed again at the transcription—it certainly sounded final, but he was sure there was something still to come.

  Worship me in sensual abandonment

  But forget not the rites of Spring

  Nor the moment my bountiful arms spread across the sky.

  Thirteen revelers in symmetry should lie

  Four times from womb to tomb from mother to whore,

  Only then shall my powers be lent.

  She walked around the desk and stood behind him, her proximity eclipsing him like a dangerous proposition.

  “In that case your task is almost done.”

  He could feel her breath teasing his ear. “What is it like to stare at these figures night after night? Does it not excite you, Mr. Sizzlehorn?”

  Alistair breathed in sharply, sensing a trap.

  “Naturally, Lady Whistle: I am a man. But I view the mural as a work of art, as a metaphor not an actuality.”

  “But if it were an actuality—if I could promise to recreate the temple, the identical furnishings of the Villa of the Mysteries, the exact incense burning, the hypnotic pounding of the drums, the priestesses and the satyrs—would you participate, Mr. Sizzlehorn? Would you help to conjure the great, trembling life force?”

  By this time she had made her way around the desk again and stood before him, unflinching in her intention. Alistair wondered whether he had misheard: the wild statement did not fit with what he thought he knew of Lady Whistle and her station. For one disjointed moment he had the distinct sensation that someone, or something, else had spoken from deep within her. He tore himself away from her eyes. Of course he had fantasized about such carnality while working on the translation. Having never known a woman, the notion of sensual abandonment on such a scale was completely abstract, but the idea of framing such behavior with religion and ritual excited him immensely. It appealed to both the archaeologist and the romantic.

  “But you cannot do that, my lady,” he stuttered. “It would be against the law and God.”

  “I can do what I like. There will be no murder, no blood sacrifice. And we are all of age, sir.”

  “We?”

  “I have twelve willing participants who fit the requirements of the rite.”

  The air between them thickened like a velvety skin that shimmered with sexual possibility.

  “But who would be involved in such a thing?” Desire dried his mouth.

  “Sophisticated individuals who have been tainted by power, fame, wealth—creatures who seek risk, seek escape from the tedium of conventional life. Some you might recognize; others will be there because I have chosen them for their beauty. But I promise, all will be masked. These are influential people, Alistair, but they are also people who believe in the force of Eros. Not the Eros confined by the limitations of romantic love or the repetitious machinery of procreation, but an Eros to be elegantly and coherently worshipped. A ritual to be reignited by the knowledge contained in your translation.” She placed her hands dramatically upon the drawing. “The beauty of body sliding across body—gestures unseen for thousands of years.”

  “But such a thing would be a fantasy,” Alistair protested. “The amount of research, of reconstruction involved, is inconceivable.”

  “I have achieved it. I have rebuilt the interior of the temple from the House of Mysteries as accurately as possible. It lies hidden on my country estate, Whistlewaite. We are ready, Alistair. All we are missing is the thirteenth participant.”

  She leaned across and ran her finger along Alistair’s jawline, arriving at the edge of his lips. With exquisite lightness, she caressed them, sending tremors throughout his entire body. They exploded in delicious finality somewhere in
the back of his brain as her fingertip pushed its way into his mouth. Alistair was convinced he was about to swoon. To complicate the matter further Lady Whistle sat on the desk and pressed against him. It was the nearest Alistair had ever been to a woman and the soft pillow of her breast felt as though it were burning a circle through his threadbare coat.

  “The thirteenth member is the priest—the pure scholar,” she murmured, her breath licking the side of his face. “The cerebral virgin. Virgo. He is you.”

  Alistair had the strong impression that reality had departed at some juncture and the room, himself, and the woman before him had seamlessly entered a dreamworld. A world where his preconceived notions of how women behaved—particularly those who were far above one’s station and therefore unattainable—had been turned topsy-turvy.

  “You are a virgin, are you not?” she whispered, rolling her tongue around the word as if it were an exotic fruit.

  Unable to speak, he nodded dumbly. She smiled and eased her finger out of his mouth. “Wonderful. The ritual must take place at the exact moment when the old astrological year passes into the new. From the wisdom of Pisces into the energetic child of the Ram, Aries. Midday on the spring equinox, the twenty-first of March.”

  She caught up a shawl of heavy silk and swung it around her shoulders with a flourish. “That allows you six weeks to make a decision, Alistair. For, trust me, the ritual will take place.”

  Sleep fled his tormented body and flapped around the bedroom like a trapped bird. Resigned, Alistair sat up to light a candle. He was still wondering whether his feverish imagination hadn’t conjured up the whole encounter. If Lady Whistle hadn’t scrawled the date and time she intended to conduct her bizarre rite on a slip of paper and fastened it to his lapel like a railway ticket pinned to a lost child, he might be inclined to believe that carnal frustration had indeed addled his brain. But no: there was the paper, as real as the moonlight creeping under the grimy curtain.

  But what of his soul, Alistair thought; furthermore what of love? Or had that emotion become completely redundant among the aristocracy? He tried to rationalize but his logic was fuzzy with exhaustion. He had always imagined his first encounter would be of a passionate nature. A tender consummation of desire shared by common intellectual spirits. The image of the thirteenth participant, the priest, his bearded face infused with religious ecstasy appeared before the insomniac.

  “You will experience a greater love than mere romance,” Lady Whistle had promised. “We thirteen shall form a human link to the cosmos. For a brief moment we too shall be gods.”

  Was Lady Whistle’s sanity entirely whole, he wondered. But to see what she had built, to go back in time…? He had dreamed of this all his life: to walk with the Romans, to be worshipped like a deity, to be seduced like an emperor. He fell back against the pillow, sleep claiming him at last.

  He was woken two hours later by a loud knocking.

  “Mr. Sizzlehorn, there’s a servant ‘ere for you—a whippersnapper from Lady Whistle, so ‘e reckons. Wants words with you, he does, at this ungodly hour!” Mrs. Jellicoe bellowed through the door.

  Alistair groaned. Throwing a worn silk dressing gown over his nightshirt, he ran across the freezing floorboards to open the door before Mrs. Jellicoe broke it down with her pounding.

  Toby, immaculate in his uniform, his youthful face impossibly fresh for six in the morning, stood grinning on the other side. Mrs. Jellicoe, clad in a nightgown covered with a ridiculous number of satin bows, quilted roses, and other frivolities, peered fascinated over the valet’s shoulder.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Jellicoe, I’ll deal with the matter now.”

  “And make sure you keep your voices down—there’s folks still sleeping, Mr. Sizzlehorn. Lucky you’re one of me favorites, getting me up at this time and in winter too,” she muttered grumpily, pushing aside a mouse trap set upon the landing as she made her way heavily down the stairs.

  Unperturbed, Toby turned to Alistair. “Lady Whistle wishes to know your answer,” he announced, one eyebrow raised critically as he caught a glimpse of the stark garret room.

  “At this time of the morning? I thought I had six weeks.”

  “My mistress keeps her own hours and waits for no one,” the valet replied, a sudden seriousness aging his face immediately.

  Something snapped on the landing behind them. They both looked down; a mouse, its spine broken, thrashed its way to a slow death.

  “Your answer, Mr. Sizzlehorn?”

  “Tell her I say yes,” Alistair replied, his own world lurching into a myriad of new possibilities.

  February rolled into March and spring began to lace the cold winds with hope. Across the Channel, Louis Napoleon declared himself Emperor Napoleon III; farther afield Englishmen flocked to the colony of New South Wales drawn by the discovery of gold; while at home the poet Tennyson continued his comfortable post as Poet Laureate.

  Alistair had not seen his mysterious patroness after that fateful night. Ever since then she had insisted her valet collect the drawings directly from the museum. For the archaeologist, life reverted back to its normal drudgery, leavened only by the anticipation that began to grow like a canker deep within him as the spring equinox approached. He was both terrified and exhilarated. He felt like a man awaiting his own execution. Desperate to distract himself, he tried spending some of the newfound wealth Lady Whistle’s stipend had given him. Fighting against his inherent frugality he even attended the opera, but found that without a companion the experience merely highlighted his loneliness.

  At one point he thought about seeking absolution and determined to confess the demonic arrangement to his one friend, a merchant from the Haymarket, Harry Holworthy. But when it came to it, he found himself telling the easygoing capitalist that he had received an unexpected inheritance from a maiden aunt. Harry urged him to invest the money in stocks—shares in the East India Company and a malt house in North Cumbria—rather than fritter it away. After purchasing a new suit, hat, gloves, and riding boots, Alistair took Harry’s advice and was delighted with the profit he accrued in a matter of weeks.

  “This will see you through to an early retirement,” Harry had promised. “We shall make you a gentleman of leisure yet.”

  As the third week of March drew near Alistair found himself wondering if he would be transformed; whether such deviancy would leave him jaded and incapable of any future love. But the vision of the penciled strokes he had copied so faithfully being brought to life—the quivering limbs, lithe flesh wound around flesh, breasts, buttocks, sex sliding into sex, with himself at the center, being caressed, stroked and worshipped—quickly dispelled any ethical dilemma. He had made a promise, a contract that could not be broken, he reminded himself piously, secretly thrilled to find a moral justification.

  The nineteenth of March arrived. On his customary walk to work Alistair noticed that already the daffodils and crocuses were poking bright green shoots through the black soil of the flower beds. Sparrows had begun to collect twigs and the delirium of courtship seemed to be increasing everywhere, except in his own life. Fear not, my man, he said to himself, in three days’ time you shall be a changed creature, a debonair blade able to boast of such sophisticated, sensual delights as most men will never experience in a lifetime. After that you will be able to have whomever you choose. The soliloquy was consoling, and his pace picked up. With a whistle he strolled through the park toward the museum, now oblivious to the courting couples around him.

  He had almost completed the final drawing for the catalogue—an erotic scene painted on a mirror showing a woman mounting the loins of her lover, one hand tenderly stretched out over his chest. In the background the faint outline of a male slave of the bedroom, a cubicularius, hovered discreetly. Alistair was just finishing the curves of the woman’s breasts with the most delicate of strokes when he became aware of the presence of someone else in the room.

  “It must be an entirely absorbing task,” said a sweet, high female voice,
followed by a short peal of laughter that cascaded incongruously through the dreary room. Alistair, completely taken by surprise, looked up.

  Standing before him, wearing a pale yellow silk dress, a damp furled umbrella by her side, her friendly face framed by a bonnet that was neither frivolous nor severe but spoke of a slightly audacious nature, was a woman who looked only a few years younger than himself. Alistair sprang to his feet, knocking over a bronze of a dwarf, who fell onto the tip of his ridiculously huge penis and balanced there precariously. Alistair, in a feeble attempt to conceal such obscenity, stood before the table his arms spread wide.

  “How did you get in?” he demanded, feeling intruded upon. After all, only three people had entered the room since he had begun the catalogue—McPhee, Toby, and Lady Whistle. The girl laughed again, although Alistair noticed she was also blushing. With a cheeky air she held out her hand.

  “Margaret McPhee. Amused to make your acquaintance, especially surrounded by such quaint depictions of l’amour….”

  “McPhee! McPhee has a daughter?”

  “As far as I know, Uncle has not duplicated himself in any shape, size, or form. We must thank God for this miracle. Uncle has always appeared to show little interest in human relations—unless, of course, they are several thousand years old.”

  “You are his niece?”

  “Precisely, just as you are his apprentice.”

  “Assistant, actually.” Here Alistair bristled with self-importance. “Working on a very important and secret commission.”

  “Evidently,” Margaret McPhee responded, a wry smile playing around her wide mouth.

  The archaeologist spread his coattails in a feeble attempt to obscure her view further. “These works of art are not for the eyes of respectable young women.”

  “Oh, and I suppose they are perfectly respectable for the eyes of young men? Or are you not a respectable young man?”